


Perspective

by AngelicSentinel



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Flash Fic, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-12-01 23:15:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11496825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelicSentinel/pseuds/AngelicSentinel
Summary: He reappears where he disappeared: in the middle of Shin-Ra HQ, on the SOLDIER floor. He’s disoriented, mako blue eyes wide. There’s a crowd around him. He draws his blade, breath catching, blood rushing through his ears. They keep their distance, staying out of reach of his Fusion Swords. It’s the realest hallucination he’s had in a while. Everything is perfect; it’s like he’s there: the dim fluorescent lighting, the smell of unwashed male bodies, the green cat-like eyes that widen in surprise, so unflinchingly human, so clear from the bright gleam of revenge.





	Perspective

**1.**

As soon as Kadaj disappears into the ether, Cloud does too, the same rain that had cured his geostigma seemingly dissolving him into little pieces of the lifestream–he feels no pain, has no fear; there is only overwhelming joy **.** When he dies, it is with peace and happiness in the lifestream’s embrace. 

**2.**

He reappears where he disappeared: in the middle of Shin-Ra HQ, on the SOLDIER floor. He’s disoriented, mako blue eyes wide. There’s a crowd around him. He draws his blade, breath catching, blood rushing through his ears. They keep their distance, staying out of reach of his Fusion Swords. It’s the realest hallucination he’s had in a while. Everything is perfect; it’s like he’s there: the dim fluorescent lighting, the smell of unwashed male bodies, the green cat-like eyes that widen in surprise, so unflinchingly human, so clear from the bright gleam of revenge.

**3.**

Cloud can’t do anything but stare at those eyes; they hold him across a room, imprison him more fully than bars ever could. After a long moment, he closes his own, remembers the techniques for centering himself and coming back to the present, and _breathes_ , in and out, in and out, blood howling like a nibel wolf.

4.

When he opens his eyes again, the world remains the same; everything blurs but those eyes. He clenches his teeth; now’s not the time for another mental break. Sephiroth is thrice gone, but here his stands, Shin-Ra’s poster boy, their First, their war hero, surrounded by a plethora of Seconds and Thirds.

5.

“Who are you?” the hallucination asks, deep voice even, hair perfect.

6.

That’s a hell of a question. It has only one answer, wry and honest. “I wish I knew.”

7.

As the scene doesn’t change, doesn’t flicker into the ether, Cloud concludes this must be real. And it it is real, by some minuscule chance, then forty-five people saw him appear from thin air in a flash of green, including two Firsts, Sephiroth and a broad man with Zack’s sword.  It doesn’t matter. He’s proven time and again no prison in the world can hold him, not if he doesn’t want it to. He turns to leave, Sephiroth demanding he wait, and when he doesn’t, Sephiroth attacks.

8.

They meet in a flash of steel, SOLDIERS moving to make room as Cloud wields first Tsurugi and second Tsurugi, catching Masamune between them. The clash only lasts minutes, but it feels like hours, and ends with Sephiroth’s hair tangled on the floor, Cloud’s sword at his throat, on his back and eyes wide, Masamune out of reach. Cloud quirks his lips, holds out a hand to help him up. Sephiroth looks at his outstretched hand, frowns. He takes it anyway. Cloud helps him up. He leaves.

9.

No one accosts him as he walks out of Shin-Ra HQ, sword harnessed to his back, still covered in blood and dust. He’s not at all surprised to see Midgar still standing at the height of its glory. Still draining the life’s-blood from the planet. Cloud takes a deep breath and gets to work.

10.

Time passes, as is its wont. Cloud finds work in the slums, breeds chocobos, refurbishes vehicles. It’s not hard work for a deft hand, just involved, and before long he has Fenrir again. There is something about delivery he likes, and it’s easy enough to find work as a courier for those that do not trust the Shin-Ra service. Sometimes though, he likes to drive out, past the wastes, beyond Kalm, to the open fields where there’s nothing but him and the monsters, and spend days there. It’s peaceful. He needs that peace as he contemplates the lifestream, wonders just how he’s supposed to help the planet this time around.

11.

His peace is interrupted one evening as he wakes up from his nap to find cool green eyes staring at him. Cloud rolls over, sits up, cracks his neck, then leans back on his hands to watch the sunset. Sephiroth doesn’t say anything, but he feels his presence. It stays beside him until well after the sun goes down. They don’t speak, and Cloud sits in silence until he goes.

12.

The next time they meet, it’s another fight. This one has Sephiroth vicious, desperate almost in his movements. It’s frenzy, plain and simple. But no one has been able to defeat Cloud in years, and this fight ends the way the first does. Sephiroth on his knees, hair disheveled, Cloud’s blade against his throat.  “Please,” Sephiroth asks, not a plea but a demand. “Help.”

13.

Cloud doesn’t remember Angeal, doesn’t know a Genesis. But he thinks, as Sephiroth explains the situation to him in a terse tone, he knows a little of what drove Sephiroth to madness. He is a tragic figure, his fall from grace, but this heaven is as corrupted as the hell it once became. “Sure,” Cloud says easy, “I might know a lil’ something.”

14.

What most people ultimately forget is that Cloud is a country boy. He grew up awkward and alone in a small town where no one got him. He’ll always be reserved, but at least half that is the feeling of being too small for the world being so big. So it doesn’t surprise him so much that in actually spending time around Sephiroth, away from you know, his nervous breakdown and dubious corrupted clones, he finds that Sephiroth is rather awkward around people as well, usually hidden by a commanding presence and orders to subordinates. But he cares, in his standoffish way. It shouldn’t be as much of a surprise as it is.

15.

The trip to the slums is a quiet one. This Aerith is not like the Aeris he knew, but she’s close enough in both manner and character it makes him feel at home.  Tseng is there, Zack too. Cloud can’t pretend to understand it, but he asks, and she agrees to try, and Aerith makes it rain. Nothing, not even the Plate can prevent Aerith’s Great Gospel, and as it the rain puddles on the Plate and in the slums, Cloud thinks he feels the wind caress him, and he smiles at Aeris, closing his eyes, a final farewell.

16.

There’s a weight to Sephiroth’s gaze as he stares at Cloud, one Cloud ignores. He, Aerith, Zack, and Sephiroth partied up and now they’re heading off to find the two Shin-Ra deserters before they can harm themselves or other people. It’s strange like this, traveling with the people-not-people he remembers, like puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit. They're not the same, but then again, neither is he.

17.

They find them both in Banora, because of course they do. It doesn’t take so long for Aerith to hit her limit, and once she does, there is nowhere in the world they can hide that she can’t reach.

18.

They fall, because of course they do. Stunned and stuttered and no longer angels, but men. The Great Gospel heals degradation as much as it does the geostigma, purifying these men that Cloud can’t remember inside and out.

19.

None of them feel at all inclined to go back to Shin-Ra. That’s the thing about leashes; they are the four strongest men in the world, and nothing can hold them if they do not wish. Control is an illusion, a bluff, a murmur about consequences they have no power to control once JENOVA is purified.

20.

Sephiroth does return though, chained by a sense of responsibility. He is quiet as ever as he puts the President in his place, six feet under. Rufus is all too happy to take over, though not so much about the oversight.  Cloud joins him, desiring nothing more than his company as they change the company.

21.

Vincent is woken, one by one, reactors are shut down replaced with greener energy. Shin-Ra withdraws from Wutai. Not everything is perfect, but it is as perfect a situation as one might wish, considering the circumstances.

22.

It’s not a where or a how or a when. Since Cloud’s rearrival, they’ve been drawn to one another. Perhaps Sephiroth is enchanted by an equal. Perhaps Sephiroth just needed his friends. Cloud doesn’t know. What Cloud does know is they’re sitting quietly on the edge of a cliff in the wastes. Cloud turns into the wind, feeling it on his face, closes his eyes, tastes the peace and freedom he’d never so much as been allowed to touch.

23.

“I love you,” he hears. The words are stunned, stilted, broken, breathless. A realisation, unplanned.

24.

“What?” Cloud says, because he absolutely must have heard wrong. He turns, and Sephiroth, untouchable, untameable Sephiroth, has such a look of wonder and awe on his face. There is blood, there is fire, there is pain between them. But his pupils are round, his face clear. He purses his lips like he didn’t mean to say it, and Cloud can’t let it go unanswered.

25.

Cloud’s never been much one for words, so he leans forward, presses a soft kiss to Sephiroth’s lips. The man is looking at him like he’s a mythical creature, stunned, almost _skittish_. Cloud just shakes his head, wonders at his life. “Okay,” he says, and that’s that.


End file.
